Page 18 of Don't Game Me
Jake adored them. They represented a parental stability he’d craved as a kid.
As he walked the lush hallway runner toward the kitchen, he heard Becca’s laugh. Rich, happy, and everything he remembered from each time he’d heard the addictive sound over the years.
Yesterday’s kiss slow-replayed in his mind. She’d been so responsive. The small sounds deep in her throat had tortured him all night with visions of what happened once the door shut.
Them lip-locking had been a mistake. A mistake he’d enjoyed. Greatly. But he wouldn’t allow it to happen again, no matter how much she tempted him.
He pushed into the kitchen right on the trill of another one of her laughs. Becca gazed down from her post, perched high on the kitchen counter. A guy he vaguely recognized from Noah’s bachelor party, one of the other groomsmen, gazed up at her. Noah had told Jake he knew this guy from high school, but he didn’t seem particularly chummy with him. The guy’s mother was a close friend of Noah’s mom. It proved how little weddings were actually about the bride and groom.
Jake worried Becca would fall when she stood on tippy-toes in heeled boots to reach something high on one of the shelves. Her sweater pulled up to reveal the smooth skin of her stomach. Could those jeans be any more skintight? His heart raced, and not just out of fear she’d plummet.
“I could’ve sworn Mom kept one stored… Aha.” Becca removed a small plastic device and held it up like a trophy. Her eyes slid to Jake’s gaze for an instant. She raised a challenging eyebrow his way and wobbled.
He lunged forward.
“Whoa there, girl,” the groomsman beneath her said and put his hand high up on her shapely legs to stabilize her. His fingers were inches from her ass.
“Why would anyone keep a champagne opener way up here and not in a drawer?” She shook her head and rolled her eyes.
The guy with his hand almost on her ass gave her a charming smile. The bastard planned to make Becca his weekend wedding lay. Not in this lifetime.
She granted the guy a look of gratitude.
Every muscle in Jake’s body tensed.Look at me, not this asshole,he silently ordered her.
The focus of her gratitude reached up, placed his hands on her curvy hips, and lifted her down to the floor. Her soft laugh traveled across to Jake.
“What’s got you all wound up?” Noah asked beside him.
Jake flinched from the shock of Noah unexpectedly beside him but didn’t answer. He couldn’t look away from what was transpiring between Becca and the prick she continued to gape at as if he were a god incarnate.
“Did Becca do something wrong?” Noah scowled at Becca, who now acted oblivious to their presence on the opposite end of the huge modern kitchen.
“I just got here,” Jake mumbled.
“Looks like she found the champagne opener. Good. Mom’s got a burr up her butt to make mimosas this morning.” Noah called out, “Reid, thanks for helping Becca find it.”
A surge of competitive sizing-up had Jake evaluating the groomsman from his wire-rim glasses to the purple polo shirt. Jake could take him, break him, and make him think twice about messing around with Becca. Reid met Jake’s gaze. His eyes narrowed for a fraction of an instant.
Game on, asshole.
Becca gazed in gratitude at Reid one more time. The guy asked her something he couldn’t hear. She giggled. Jake wanted to crush the schmuck.
Becca could not want to hook up with Purple Polo Shirt. But this was Becca. She didn’t give up when she put her mind to something. And he wasnotrethinking her wedding-date proposal.
No.
He needed to stick to his decision. But he sure as hell wouldn’t allow her to go with Purple Polo Shirt.
Reid made her giggle again. The guy had user written all over him. Reid was wrong for Becca.
And you’re right for her?
She might think she wanted a hookup but she didn’t want a meaningless one-nighter. The girl fished to hook Mr. Long-term. He wasn’t biting that bait. Reid wouldn’t chomp that lure either. Becca wasn’t naïve, and she sure as hell wasn’t a virgin. The six months she’d dated that schmuck in undergrad had driven Jake insane with how wrong the guy was for her—too boring and starchy. Maybe she really was in it this weekend for a little short-term action.
Why was he still debating this? He’d decided the answer was no.
Noah asked, “Did you get held up by the call this morning?”
